


throw your inhibitions (to the winds)

by randomling



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 10:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomling/pseuds/randomling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Apparently, the Troubles don't even stop for Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. from the hip

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unadrift](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unadrift/gifts).



"Nathan, what are you dmmphrff - "

Audrey had to stop talking because Nathan's mouth was over hers then, his hand hot on the back of her neck, pressing her against him. She gasped, but as his lips met hers, the gasp turned into a sigh and she sank into his kiss for several long, sweet moments.

When she finally pulled back, she found that her hand had slipped up under his jacket to the small of his back, the other on his hip, and Nathan's arm was wrapped loosely around her waist. She took a few long, slow deep breaths, trying to figure out how to step out of his embrace and leave the way open for her to come back. They had work to do.

"Nathan..." she said, gently, out of breath.

Nathan smiled. "Shut up, Parker," he said, and kissed her again.

She had to pull back almost instantly this time. "Nathan," she said, "I have to go. I have to get to Sarah Terry. Then all of this can end."

"Why would we want it to end?" Nathan asked.

 _Why indeed,_ she thought, and slipped out of his embrace.

## Ten hours earlier

Audrey put her latte on her desk and settled into the chair, casting an eye over the station as she did. The guys had clearly gone all out last night: the tree was enormous and beautifully decorated, tinsel and mistletoe hung and draped all over the place. It looked...

"It's a mess, isn't it," Nathan said from behind her.

"Merry Christmas to you, too, Nathan," Audrey said as she turned.

He only smirked in response. "C'mon, we gotta go."

Never a dull moment, Audrey thought, and got to her feet again. "What's going on?"

"There's been a... an incident at Laura's," Nathan said, striding ahead of her.

She followed him. "The breakfast place?"

"Yeah. Looks like a party got out of hand or something."

"Last night?"

"Nope, about - " Nathan glanced at his watch - "ten minutes ago."

"Nathan, it's eight thirty in the morning."

"You don't have to tell me that," Nathan said.

  


* * *

  


"What the - " was what Audrey said before they had even gotten out of the car.

It was bright and early on a Sunday morning, but the street outside Laura's looked like the 3am after a St Patrick's Day parade. The music from Laura's jukebox was cranked up high - Call Me Maybe, like Audrey needed to have that in her head all day.One of the plate glass windows had been shattered - probably by the chair that was lying in a pool of broken glass on the sidewalk outside. There were two people against the wall by that same broken window, apparently in the advanced stages of making out. One guy was taking a leak up against a trash can. A handful of men - Audrey counted four, no, five - were in the middle of a brawl. It looked like a couple of them were wielding chair legs. For a few seconds, Audrey could do nothing except sit there, taking in the scene as Nathan called in for backup.

"Hey, break it up!" Nathan yelled. "Police." He already had one foot out of the Jeep, his badge in his hand; Audrey was struggling with her seatbelt, which had chosen the perfect moment to become a pain in the ass. She looked up to see Nathan striding purposefully towards the brawl, and two of the brawlers, chair legs in hand, running towards him.

She realised what was about to happen a second before it did. As one, the brawlers turned their attention to Nathan. One grabbed Nathan's arms and held them behind his back; the other raised his makeshift weapon to attack. "Nathan!" she shouted. Her seatbelt released and she almost fell to the ground in her haste to get out of the car.

She drew her weapon. In the two seconds it took for her to get a clear shot, the chair leg was brought down hard against the side of Nathan's head. She heard the thunk from ten yards away.

"Drop your weapon!" Audrey yelled. "DROP YOUR WEAPON!"

Nathan was upright, unfazed, unafraid, but blood was starting to run down his face from the wound on his temple. His assailant raised the chair leg for a second time, grim intent in his face. Audrey aimed at the man's leg, fired once, and he crumpled to the ground.

As she pulled out her phone to summon an ambulance, she saw something out of the corner of her eye that changed the game: A woman, mid-twenties, turning and running from the scene.

  


* * *

  


"I'm still not completely clear on the nature of the Trouble," Nathan said. "It's... what, alcohol?"

"Or something like the effects of alcohol," said Audrey. None of the people from Laura's had been able to identify her mystery woman, and while they had an APB out on a woman in her mid-twenties with dark hair who'd had breakfast at Laura's this morning, neither of them was hopeful. There were a lot of dark-haired young women in Haven.

"I just wish I'd been able to talk to her," she added, almost an afterthought.

Then again, what would she have done differently? Left Nathan alone and bleeding, still surrounded by armed men? He couldn't feel it, of course, and he couldn't see it through her eyes, but the bandage over Nathan's temple was her reminder that he could have lost an eye - or much more. And by the time they'd secured the scene, the woman had been long gone.

"You know, Nathan, I could handle this by myself just fine," she said.

He gave her a sideways look. "I'm fine. The paramedic said I didn't have a concussion."

She smiled. "You should be home. Resting."

"Home, where I'm no good to anyone for no reason? I'll pass," Nathan said, but he was smiling, too. He made the turn onto Oak Street,and the radio crackled.

"Nathan, hon, you there?"

"Go ahead, Laverne," Nathan said, steering one-handed.

"There's been a disturbance at the Grey Gull," Laverne's voice said.

"We'll be right there," Nathan said, and the radio dissolved back into static. He caught Audrey's eye, and she raised her eyebrows.

"They're not open yet," she said.

"Open? It's not even ten thirty, Duke's not _up_ yet."

This, Audrey thought, was probably true. Nathan made a U-turn a hundred yards from Laura's, and Audrey took one last look at the crime scene over her shoulder.

Where _was_ that woman?   


* * *

  


They arrived at the Grey Gull to more of the same: a broken window, a couple of smashed lamps, and Duke, sitting in the middle of his bar. He looked up when Nathan and Audrey stepped through the wide open door.

"Audrey," he said, grinning. "Am I glad to see you. And Nathan!" He held out his hand, and after a second of puzzlement, Nathan took it, warily. Audrey felt almost as surprised as Nathan looked when Duke pulled him into a hug, then released him to kiss Audrey firmly on the cheek. "I love you guys," he said, "you know that, right?"

"Uh... okay," Nathan stuttered.

"Duke, you called the cops," Audrey said.

"You're really, really beautiful. Did you know that, Audrey?"

Her eyebrows lifted without consulting her brain first, and she felt Nathan bristle beside her. "Duke," she said, and she grabbed him by the shoulders. "Duke, I need you to tell me what happened here."

Duke put one hand on the side of Audrey's face and smiled at her lovingly, which, frankly, was extremely confusing on his face. _"Duke,"_ she repeated firmly.

"You want me to restrain him?" Nathan asked. The tone was idle, but she could hear the anger underneath it, and prepared herself for damage control.

"No, Nathan," Audrey said.

"Hey, no, c'mon," Duke said, stepping back and holding up both hands. "I know the deal here. I know she's in love with you. I just wanted to pay the lady a compliment."

Audrey frowned, because there was nothing at all of the slick confidence trickster in his manner, and that was definitely a first.

"She's a wonderful woman, Nathan," said Duke, "you should take care of her."

"Duke," Audrey repeated, beginning to feel hopeless. "I need you to concentrate, okay? Something happened here. Somebody broke a window. You called the cops. Do you remember that?"

Duke laughed. "Of course I do!"

"Okay, can you tell me what happened?"

"Do you want a drink? I could use a drink," said Duke, and Audrey sighed. He headed behind the bar - practically danced there, in fact - and began looking over the bottles there.

"Is this the Trouble?" Nathan asked softly.

"I don't see what else it could be," Audrey said, also under her breath. "He's not himself, Nathan, he's... I don't know, he's all over the place." _Like the effects of alcohol,_ she'd guessed in the car, but she'd seen Duke drunk and booze didn't affect him like this. No, this was something they never got from Duke, even when he was several bottles deep: the pure, unvarnished truth.

And, okay, a good hearty dose of distractibility.

"You think?" Nathan said, and Audrey glanced at him and rolled her eyes. They shared a smile as Duke turned and placed a bottle of Scotch and three glasses on the bar.

"Come on, guys. Have a drink with your friendly neighbourhood bartender."

"This is very weird," Nathan said, but Audrey gave him alook, and with a sigh, he joined her at the bar

  


* * *

  


Duke's story came out not only slowly, but inside-out and backwards, in between compliments for Audrey and a whole bunch of Nathan-do-you-remembers that, had she not been working, Audrey would have loved to follow up. Nathan tolerated the whole thing with what seemed like good humour, sipping slowly at the generous glass of Scotch that Duke had poured him and rolling his eyes frequently.

He'd been woken about thirty minutes before by loud banging on the door, and come into the bar to find a middle-aged man demanding to be let in. He'd wanted alcohol, and when Duke had refused him service, he went a little wild. He'd broken that window and smashed up the place pretty good before Duke had taken control of the situation and thrown the guy out on his ass.

But that didn't make sense. "So if that's what happened, how did Duke get affected?" Nathan asked. Duke had wandered into the kitchen, looking for the ingredients for something delicious that he just had to make for Nathan and Audrey right now.

"I don't know," she said, and got up to follow Duke into the kitchen. Nathan stayed put, taking another slow sip of his scotch.

"Duke?" she said. He was at the counter, chopping herbs furiously. "Duke, I gotta ask you something else."

"Sure, Audrey, what is it?" Duke didn't look up from his work; he slid the chopped herbs into a bowl with some ground meat and onions. "Basil," he said. "Tastes amazing, trust me."

"Yeah, Duke, listen a minute. Was there a woman here earlier?" Audrey said.

He looked up at her. "No one as beautiful as you," he said.

"I... um. I don't _mind_ or anything. I don't care how beautiful she was. I want to know if a woman was here because I think she might be Troubled."

"Oh!" said Duke. "I wanna help. I can help you. I like helping you, Audrey."

"That's good, Duke." God, this was like talking to a child. Audrey swallowed her frustration and refocused on the problem. "RIght now, you can help me by telling me if there was a woman here earlier. With the guy. The one who smashed up your bar."

He turned back to his cooking.

"Duke, c'mon."

"She wasn't with the guy," he said at last. "She came after. I think she was following him? Or something."

"What happened?"

"Nothing, really, we didn't do _anything_."

"I believe you, Duke." She took another careful step towards him, aware that the large, sharp knife he'd used to chop the herbs was still right by his hand. God, how long was it since she'd wondered if Duke might hurt her? But this Trouble seemed to affect people in really unpredictable ways, and she’d learned the hard way to be cautious . "Did she stay long? Did she say anything?"

"She said she was sorry," he said. "And then she left. That was it, I swear."

 _She was sorry. That's her,_ Audrey thought. "Thank you, Duke," Audrey said. She looked at him for a moment. "Do you want to come down to the police station? I think that would be better."

"Can I help more if I come with you?"

"Sure," Audrey said. "I just think we should have someone keep an eye on you. For a while."

"I'm fine," Duke said. For a moment she thought they might have a struggle getting him out of there, and then he said, "but, okay," and he put down the bowl of hamburger cheerfully.

Duke followed her out of the kitchen. Nathan was still at the bar, swirling the last half-inch of his Scotch in an attitude of extreme boredom.

"Come on, guys," she said.

  


* * *

  


Audrey closed Nathan's office door behind her. "We finally got Duke's composite."

"What the hell took so long?"

"The effects of this woman's Trouble only wore off about an hour ago, so it was pretty slow going for Mike." Audrey sat down opposite Nathan and handed him the portrait, which he looked at closely for a moment before setting it down. "He's gone back to the Gull to open up."

"He's okay?" Nathan asked, and Audrey couldn't suppress a small smile. She was still convinced that under the many layers of their complex relationship, Nathan and Duke actually cared about each other.

"He's fine, Nathan."

"So what now?" Nathan asked. "We follow the next trail of destruction and hope she's at the end of it?"

"Well, we're passing it around the station and posting it all over town. Hopefully someone will recognise her, or maybe she'll come in."

"Yeah, and maybe Santa will deliver her to the door."

Audrey grinned. "That _could_ be somebody's Trouble, for all we know."

"God, I hope not."

Audrey reached for the composite, but was stopped halfway through the motion by a knock on the door.

"Yeah," Nathan called, and when the door opened, Stan was behind it.

"Chief," Stan said. "I can ID this girl."

"You can?" Audrey said, surprised but happy.

"Sarah Terry," Stan said. "She went to school with my son."

  


* * *

  


"Our luck isn't improving," Nathan said as the Jeep pulled up outside the Terry house. Not a single light was on. Audrey wasn't exactly surprised.

She hopped out of the car onto a dusting of fresh snow. From the clean look of the sidewalk and driveway, it looked as if no one had come or gone since this afternoon's storm. She strode up the path anyway, Nathan at her side and knocked on the door.

When there was no response, she knocked again, though she wasn't hopeful. "Open up. Police."

Nothing. She and Nathan exchanged a glance. "What now?" he asked.

"We need somebody who knows her," Audrey said. "It sounds like her Trouble activated sometime early this morning. If she didn't come home, where did she go? Other family in town? Friends?"

Nathan half-turned to go back to the car and stopped. "Uh, Parker."

She followed his gaze to see a woman standing on the sidewalk, a few feet from the Jeep. She was small, thin, dark hair falling to her shoulders, hands shoved into the pockets of a duffel coat, and she looked terrified. Sarah Terry.

"It's okay," Audrey began.

"No," Sarah said. "Please, no. Please. Just leave me alone!'

She turned and fled while beside Audrey, Nathan reeled as if he'd been punched. As if he'd been punched and felt it. "Sarah, wait!" Audrey called, but before she could take a single step in pursuit, Nathan grabbed her by the wrist. She turned her head, bewildered.

"Nathan, what are you dmmphrff - "


	2. from the heart

"Sarah!"

One advantage of fresh snow was that Audrey could follow Sarah's footsteps even though she'd disappeared around a corner. The tracks turned from Pleasant onto Lincoln, and from there, Audrey could see Sarah's beige duffel coat receding into the distance.

"Sarah!" she called again. From behind her, she heard Nathan yelling her last name, could hear him approaching. She picked up the pace. "Sarah, wait!"

The woman looked over her shoulder, turned, and slowly came to a stop. Audrey kept moving, worried that Sarah would spook and vanish again. If Duke and the guys from Laura's were any indication, Nathan wouldn't be himself for another six hours, and who knew how many other people Sarah might come into contact before Nathan was a cop again.

Part of the great destiny, she figured. One woman to face down the Troubles, watch as they knocked down the people she cared about, and keep fighting in the face of it.

For one stormy, violent second, she hated it. Then she swallowed it, attention back on the matter at hand.

"Sarah," she said, breathless, as soon as she was within a reasonable distance. "Please don't run away. I can help you." She made eye contact with Sarah, but only got a rabbit-in-headlights look back. "It's okay," she said, "I'm not gonna hurt you."

"Everybody's going crazy," Sarah said. Audrey could hear the note of fear in her voice, threatening to spill over into panic at any moment. A moment ago, she'd been hating this, but now Audrey felt a pang. What a Trouble.

"Not me. Look. See? I'm fine."

"But - " Sarah pointed a trembling hand behind Audrey. "What about him?" Audrey looked around to see that Nathan had come around the corner.

"He's harmless. He - " She took a second, because what she was about to say kind of floored her. "He just wants to be with me. But I'm here to help you, Sarah. It's gonna be okay."

"He's not gonna..." Sarah frowned. "Some people got violent."

"I know," Audrey said, thinking back to Laura's. "He won't hurt you, Sarah. I promise. Okay?" Sarah was still looking at Nathan with apprehension. "He's not - um - he isn't a stalker, or anything. He just got hit with your whammy. He's a good man. He won't hurt either of us." She dropped her voice. "If you want to know the truth, I want to be with him too." She smiled, conspiratorially, figuring that an all-girls-together moment might get through when nothing else would.

Sarah gave a wobbly half-smile as Nathan's pace slowed to a walk. "He's not really my type," she said.

Audrey let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding.

  


* * *

  


A half-hour later, Audrey had managed to get Nathan to sit in the living room of the Terry house, while she and Sarah sat in the kitchen with mugs of tea. After some minutes of silence, Audrey figured it was on her to begin.

"Sarah, have you ever heard of the Troubles?" she asked.

"I know I'm cursed," Sarah said, so softly that Audrey could barely hear her. And after a long pause: "I've heard of them."

"I think what's happening to you is a Trouble... an affliction," Audrey said. "It's not your fault. I think something bad happened to you this morning, Sarah, and it made this happen. Can you tell me what was going on?"

"I," Sarah said, and stopped, looking intently into her tea.

"Sarah?" She reached out and put one hand tentatively on Sarah's wrist. Sarah jumped, and Audrey retracted the hand.

"I got dumped," Sarah said. Her voice was so quiet it was barely audible, her tone despondent.

Audrey nodded.

"That's stupid, right? I mean, I've heard about these things. Usually it's something terrible that happens to you. You get assaulted, or somebody dies that's close to you, or... you know. Really bad stuff."

"A breakup can be pretty bad," Audrey said. "It happened this morning, didn't it? At Laura's."

"Yeah," Sarah said.

"Can you tell me something about what happened?"

"It - uh - I - " Sarah started, and then stopped again. Audrey held Sarah's gaze until she looked down at her tea again. There was a long silence and then Sarah said, "We'd been having some problems. Over the last couple of months, I mean. And we were supposed to meet this morning and talk it out, and um."

"He didn't show?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, Sarah. I'm sorry." She reached for Sarah's arm again, and this time Sarah didn't flinch. "Did you try calling?"

"Only about a hundred times."

Audrey made a face. "He isn't answering?"

"No. And I, uh... I went over earlier today. Nobody's home." Sarah's hands closed around her mug.

"Okay," Audrey said. "You know what I think? I think it'd help you out a lot if he actually told you what's going on to your face. Am I right?"

"Maybe," Sarah said.

What a jerk, Audrey thought. She wasn't sure if a cleaner break-up would really help Sarah feel better, but she had to try something. If this didn't help, they'd have to figure out a way to isolate her, and that would be awful.

"So let's go over to his place and see what we can figure out."

  


* * *

  


She was a little surprised how pliable whammied-Nathan was; he agreed to stay in the car, just because she asked him to. If Sarah hadn't been there, she might have rewarded him with a kiss, just because.

She knocked four times, yelled a little, then jimmied the boyfriend's apartment door while Sarah stood to one side. "Is that legal?" Sarah asked, and Audrey only smiled mischievously.

Inside was... well, it was an apartment. If the guy'd been a suspect, Audrey would be trying to pick up all kinds of psychological cues from the way he'd arranged his belongings, but there was really one fact she needed now.

"He's not here," she said.

"Nope," Sarah echoed.

She looked around, mostly out of habit. The place was pretty tidy. Pile of mail on the table, next to a - woman's purse? _Dammit, Audrey thought, this is about to get so much worse._ "Sarah..."

"That's hers," Sarah said.

"Hers? Whose?"

"Elizabeth's," Sarah said. "That's, uh, that's the person I broke up with. My ex-girlfriend."

"Oh," Audrey said, and took a moment to reassess the situation. Not that it took much; Elizabeth was still a jerk.

"I guess that explains why I couldn't reach her," Sarah said numbly. She reached into the purse and pulled out an iPhone. Twelve missed calls showed on the screen; she dropped it back into the purse without another look.

"Do you know what her plans were after seeing you?" Sarah shook her head. "Work? School?"

"I... well, it's Sunday. She works up at Beauvoir's Crafts. I don't know if she was scheduled today, though."

"Let's find out," Audrey said.

  


* * *

  


Audrey took Nathan home before trying to find the next piece of the puzzle. He protested a little, but he quieted down when she promised him pancakes as soon as the investigation was done. Even whammied, Nathan understood the importance of helping the Troubled. She thought of taking Sarah to the police station, but balked at the idea of a whole station full of whammied cops.

Beauvoir's, an arts-and-crafts shop in the old town, had been closed for hours; after a little digging, Audrey called the owner at home. According to Jane Beauvoir, the craft-store owner, Elizabeth Rausch had been scheduled that day, but hadn't shown up for work.

"That's not like her," Sarah said. One hand went to her hair and her fingers twisted in it nervously. Audrey tapped the End Call button on her phone.

"Okay." Audrey put her phone on the dash. Sarah was in the passenger seat - Audrey's usual place - with Audrey beside her. Audrey was reminded of long nights she'd spent with Nathan, staking out one place or another, drinking ungodly amounts of coffee and throwing ideas around. She was missed him; missed the sounding board, the dry sarcasm, the slight roughness of his voice.

"We know she left home this morning," Audrey went on. "Probably in a hurry, if she left her purse at home. So what then?" Audrey thought for a moment. "How would she get to the diner? Would she drive?"

"She'd probably walk," Sarah said. "She's been on a fitness kick."

"That's, what, a half-hour walk from her place to Laura's?"

"Yeah."

"So what happened to her? Between leaving home on foot and..." She was struck with inspiration, and picked up the Jeep's radio. "Hey, Laverne? It's Audrey. Have there been any reports of car accidents involving pedestrians between... say, seven-thirty and eight this morning?"

"I'll look into it."

"Car accident?" Sarah said, and Audrey could hear that note of panic creep back into her voice. She'd calmed down significantly over the past hour, so this felt like a significant setback.

"It's just one line of inquiry," Audrey said aiming to calm. "We don't know what happened to Elizabeth, and ruling this kind of thing out is one thing we do in cases like this. So it's not terrible, okay? It's just what we do."

"Okay," Sarah said shakily.

"Okay."

They waited, mostly in silence, for the better part of five minutes. Audrey tried a couple of times to start conversation, but Sarah seemed to be mostly away in her own world, and her responses were short and kind of tangential. It was a relief when Laverne radioed back to tell Audrey that they had a candidate. An unidentified woman had been struck by a car on Cedar, and taken to the hospital. A quick call to the hospital told Audrey that the woman was still unidentified and still unconscious. She'd been carrying no ID.

The nurse gave Audrey a description of the woman - tall, dark-haired - and Audrey passed that on to Sarah.

"That could be her," Sarah said, not looking at Audrey.

"Do you have a picture of her, Sarah?"

Sarah nodded and dug in her coat pocket. Out of the pocket came a battered wallet, and in the wallet was a photo-booth picture of two smiling women. One was Sarah. "That's my girl," Sarah said softly.

"Sarah, I'm going to go to the hospital and try to identify her, okay?" Sarah nodded and didn't look up. "You understand why I can't take you to the hospital?"

"Oh God," Sarah said. "That'd be really dangerous! No, no, I can't be around people."

"That's why I want to find out if it's Elizabeth first. That way, maybe you'll feel better, and when you feel better, maybe your Trouble will go away. Then you can go see her. Okay?"

"Okay," Sarah said.

"Okay."

With that, Audrey put the Jeep into drive.

  


* * *

  


And so it happened that Audrey Parker, tired, hungry, and desperately wishing to be elsewhere, was sitting at Elizabeth Rausch's bedside when she woke.

The hospital's wall clock said nine fifty-three or so when Elizabeth's eyes began to open. Slowly, her eyelids fluttered, she opened and closed her mouth, and then finally turned her head to look at Audrey.

"Sarah," she murmured, in a rough, dehydrated voice. Then: "You're not Sarah."

"No," Audrey said. "But I'm going to call her right now on the phone, okay?"

"What time is it?"

"About five 'til ten," Audrey said, pulling her phone out of her pocket.

"God, I'm so late. She's gonna kill me."

"Here,' she said, passing the phone to Elizabeth, "it's ringing."

Ten minutes later, she walked Sarah to Elizabeth's hospital room.

  


* * *

  


Audrey was fumbling in her pocket for the keys to the Jeep, her fingers freezing, when she heard a voice call her name. It was so different from the way Sarah had talked just a few minutes before - it took her a few minutes to recognise it. Where before she'd been so timid, barely audible, now her voice was loud and sweet and ringing. Audrey turned.

"I wanted to say thank you. Again," Sarah said.

"It's really no problem," Audrey said. "I'm glad you and Elizabeth are working it out."

"Me too," Sarah said. "It… You helped me so much, Audrey. You were the only person around who wasn't literally going crazy at the sound of my voice. And you helped me find her. I don't know how to thank you."

"You don't have to thank me, Sarah. It's... It's what I do."

"Can I at least buy you a coffee? Something like that?"

Audrey smiled to herself. "Thanks, Sarah. Maybe another time. Right now, I have someplace I need to be."

"Okay," Sarah said. "Well, I better get back."

Audrey waved her goodbye, found the keyring, found the right key. Inside the Jeep was warm, and Audrey found herself feeling better almost immediately. Something about being surrounded by Nathan's things, even when they were separated.

Well. They weren't going to be separated for much longer. And not from now on. Audrey would see to that.

In a moment, she'd reach for her phone and hit the first number on her speed-dial. Nathan would answer, and she'd tell him she was keeping her promise: pancakes, at the all-night diner a few blocks from his house. She'd hear the warmth in his voice. Afterwards, she'd drive through the night, through the snow that was just beginning to fall.

And at last, after locking the car, and crunching through new snow on the sidewalk, she would raise her right hand and knock on his door.


End file.
